Alastair Campbell entered an unexpected debate about his feminist credentials on Sunday, when his daughter Grace called in to school him while he was presenting his live radio show on LBC.
The former political aide asked listeners what it takes to be a feminist, when Grace called in to say there’s a difference between saying you support gender equality and showing that you do. The 24-year-old said men - including him - need to “unpick things that they’ve adopted naturally because of the way society teaches them to behave”.
“Firstly, you still call women ‘birds,’ which I think you don’t even think about the impact that has. If you truly want to be a feminist, women aren’t birds, birds are birds, birds can fly, women can’t fly,” she said.
She also grilled her father for not helping around the house and being squeamish around periods. Thankfully, the presenter took her call in good spirit, promising to stop calling women birds and joking, “I’m not bad for 61.”
In light of their father-daughter debate, we asked women what their dads sometimes get wrong about feminism, even with the best of intentions. Here’s what they would like them to learn: